Ultimate Guide to Producing Good Videos

Ultimate Guide to Making Amazing VideosBy thefishnoob
Fishlore moderators and admins, would you kindly please let this post stay on all the video threads? I want people to see this and get them to learn about making videos. Thanks! (Possibly sticky this??) Thanks!

So you want to film and produce some videos about your fish huh? You also want to upload them to YouTube? Great! This is an article for you. Making videos can be very easy, however, in order to make one that people are interested in can be challenging and requires practice. My first videos were so my father told me he wanted to puke when he saw it. Now I think I am pretty good at filming and producing, but I definitely still have places to work on! This guide will teach you how to film interesting things well and how to produce them and edit them into good videos that interest the viewer. Let’s get started, then!

FILMING

1. Steady shots: Getting steady, smooth shots is the most essential step. Even if there is the best editing on a video, if the raw video is shaky, too long, or uninteresting, people will look other places. (This is if you don’t have a tripod. If you have one, use it in all ways possible. A tripod can easily turn your video from a mediocre one to a very nice one.) In order to get nice, smooth shots, you should first get a nice grip on your camera. Next, if you are moving, try to bend your legs and practice moving without bobbing up and down. Now, get your subject you are going to shoot, then hold the camera close to your chest, lock your arms, and bend your knees. Now start recording, moving slowly closer to the subject (or farther away, up, down, etc. (Movement)) as flat as possible. If you are going for a cinematic shot, this is key! If you are not moving, try to sit down or stand very steady. Then, just lock your arms and put the camera close to your chest.

2: Shot length: Making sure your shots are not too long is another important part of filming well. A good guideline is each shot is no less, no more than 2-4 seconds. More than 4 seconds can bore the audience. Some exceptions are when you are talking. This can still be worked around. (More on this later) If you look at almost any movie, you see that most shots are no more than 4 seconds.

3: Content: Another extremely important topic is what you are actually filming. As with number 1, if you have the best editing skills and post filming skills, but have absolutely boring content, nobody will watch the video. Make sure you only film what is necessary. In general, the shorter the video is the better. This does not mean cutting out good clips, but it means filming only important things and only the things that the viewer will need. Also, make sure you have an interesting topic in the first place.

4: Audio: If you are going to add commentary, make sure your background noise is not too loud. It sucks when you have great commentary but the viewer can’t hear you clearly because your air pump is too loud or your TV is on. Something you can do about this will be talked about in the editing section. Also, if you don’t need audio, you can just take it out and replace it with music. (This will also be in the editing section). In general, just keep background noises to a minimum.

EDITING

1: Length of video: When I am watching videos, for learning, entertainment, or anything really, I always pick the 1-3 minute video over the 10-20 minute one. Nowadays, people don’t have the time to watch a whole 20 minute video when you can get the same information in a 4 minute video. A shorter video firstly means short shots (filming #2) and only important content (filming #3). When editing, you can also trim long shots. Other options you can choose is just taking it out, or speeding it up, such as if you are showing you build something/set something up. Time lapses are cool most of the time and you can show the audience what you are doing without them getting bored. Keeping the video short makes sure the audience doesn’t leave and stays for the whole video. This is also about having good, interesting, and important content, short shots, and keeping steady when filming.

2: Transitions: Transitions can turn a blocky, chunky video into a smooth flowing video. Try not to go for the super complicated transitions. The best ones are the dissolve transitions. If you want some variety, go for the slide or page flips. Other animated transitions direct the audience to your transition and not your video content. Transitions can work with audio, too! Fading your music and/or commentary is also a good way to end your video and piece audio clips together.

3: Audio: Another part of getting good audience retention is the sound flowing into your audiences’ ears. If you plan on doing commentary, you can do multiple things. One would be to just commentate on the raw video while recording. This may not work out well because you may have to cut out some parts in order to take out unnecessary places and your voice will be cut off. Another problem is if you mess up your commentary. For people who want smooth, uninterrupted commentary, this might be a drawback. The last problem is the background noise you may have. This can annoy your audience and pull them to the background noise instead of yours. To solve this, you can get a simple microphone or even use your webcam mic (only if it’s good quality!) to record a scripted commentary that you record after editing your video. This is good because you can read a script and have well thought out commentary for your video. There will be less background noise if you have a quiet room and a good mic. Then, you can position it to different places in your video and have it flow into other clips without your voice being chopped up. It will sound and look much more professional if you do this. If you don’t want your voice to be heard, you can always go with captions.

4: Captions and text: As I stated in the last section, what if you don’t want your voice heard? If this is the case, you can always go with having captions on the video. There are some guidelines to this however. Make sure your captions are readable. White text on a white wall or yellow on white can simply not be seen. The same goes for purple/any dark color on black. To solve this, make sure you have contrasting text with your background. You can also go with text with contrasting borders (White text with black borders). This is so the viewers can easily read what you are trying to tell them. Another thing you need to keep in mind is to keep text in open spaces. You don’t want text in a very busy place in the shot, such as the focus area. If there is a wall or any open, unfocused space next to the point of intrest, place text there. Lastly, yet again, you need to make sure the audience will not be bored. If there is a wall of text covering your whole screen, the audience will not want to read so much. Make sure information is cut up into more digestible chunks. This makes sure the viewer can understand what you are trying to tell them!

5: Exporting and uploading: Now, go over your video a few times and check for anything that can be improved. If everything looks good, it’s time to share it with the world! Now you can export the video. Make sure you export the video at the highest video quality possible. Higher quality means longer wait time, however. This is worth the wait! A viewer will be more impressed with a channel with 1080p videos rather than 320p. Now you can upload it to YouTube! Make sure you pick a short title that tells the viewer what the video is about. You can add wording that makes them want to know more about the video. This can be achieved by making a question. For example, a title “Fish don’t like pellets” may not bring a lot of viewers, but “Foods fish hate” or “Pellets: Should you buy them?” may bring more. Ever wonder why videos with names like “Should this be banned?” get millions of views? It’s the hook that gets potential viewers to click the video. Try to keep titles short and concise. Tagging is a good idea too. Make sure you make a lot of tags! This does not mean to make random tags that don’t have anything to do with your video. Make tags that have things to do with your video. Not that your video is uploaded, tell your friends, tell the forums, and wait for the views to come in!

I hope this guide helped you! Make sure to tell me if there is anything you think needs to be changed. Thanks!
-Thefishnoob

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